Show me where it hurts, I'll show you how it works

Mottled paws struck frozen ground in a clipped beat, a lone tortoiseshell she-cat racing towards the Riverclan border as if there were a thousand and one hounds on her tail. The cold pricked at her lungs, stinging her throat and nose with the chill of leafbare. She'd been out here for a while, tail held high as she ran. Her paws had begun to ache and her legs burned ever so subtly, but Waspburn wasn't about to stop.

She needed out.

Again.

Too many thoughts roiled in her head. Too many people insisting on this or that.

"Tsk!" Her claws shot from their sheaths, digging deep into the ground as she threw herself forward. She only managed about three steps of this before a sharp pain shot up her leg, ripping a gasp from her and throwing off her balance. She stumbled, her nose slamming into the snow. She rolled a pace or two before coming to a stop, laying still.

Ow.

The sharp chill of the snow cut through the rising frustration, giving her a much needed sense of clarity and calm. She laid there for a long moment, blue-gray eyes staring blankly out at the silvery ground before her.

Thaaaaaat was... dumb. Then again a lot of what she did was dumb.

Sighing, she rolled to her paws, wincing at the pain that lanced through her left foreleg. Gingerly, she sheathed her claws and began to lick it. She was no medicine cat but she assumed based on the feel of it that she pulled a claw again. This time she didn't seem to have actually torn it out, but it still hurt. Wrinkling her nose at the inconvenience of it all, she huffed.

"Stupid claws. Stupid snow. Stupid clans."

As she groomed the now injured paw, she let her eyes roam. Despite the words she just grumbled, the snow was quite pretty in this area. The border wasn't far from here, and not many of her clanmates came out this far into the territory beyond border patrols. The white terrain was mostly smooth, unmarred by the pawsteps of nosy apprentices or nagging warriors.

But she wasn't here to admire the territory.

Rising to her paws, she ignored the sharp sting in her forepaw and began to trot toward the border. Waspburn wanted a break, and her underlying curiosity had led her here. What better way to get away from it all than to explore an area she wasn't supposed to? She neared the treeline that marked the end of their territory, considering what she was about to do. She supposed it wasn't against the rules to explore the twoleg farm, but it wasn't exactly allowed either.

At least, not alone. Right?

She snaked around a large trunk, looking at the twoleg path before her. The ground was flat and smooth and the dirt was so tightly packed it reminded her of the little pools she used to train in as a young apprentice. The twoleg path looked just like the still surface of the water, marred only by strange, unnaturally straight lines that she could only assume were caused by twolegs. The snow piled up on either side of the trail looked as if it had been moved by something. Curiously she batted a large clump of the frozen white powder on to the path. To her disappointment, nothing happened. Oh well... regardless, the path seemed to lead somewhere.

And of course, she was going to explore it

______________________________________

^{_{★☆★ Take what you can ★☆★}}

Show me where it hurts, I'll show you how it works QNTjwT2

There was something relaxing about being alone in the territory. Some sort of peace in the silence... the way the branches hung heavy beneath the weight of fresh snow... the way the setting sun bathed the forest in shadows, providing so much space for him to move unseen. It was why Wolfcall so often found himself where he was now, picking his way through the tall trees, moving from the shelter of one to the next with expert precision. Whenever possible, he stuck to the portions of hard-packed, frozen dirt close to the trunks, and under bushes, where the snow hadn't been able to lay.

He wasn't evading anyone intentionally - no, his purpose was merely self motivated... an attempt at perfecting the art of subterfuge and reconnaissance. Tomorrow, perhaps, he'd bring his apprentice here, task the youngster with following the trail that he'd lain... or, neglected to, rather.

The newly appointed deputy had thrown himself into his duties, organizing patrols, holding apprentice ceremonies, doing solo patrols to ensure every cat wasn't stretched as thin as he sometimes felt. Of course, it was self-inflicted, his exhaustion - SkyClan wasn't in dire straights, nor was it so starved for warriors that he need run himself ragged the way he did. Wolfcall's fatigue wasn't inherently physical, it was spiritual, and his relentless need to not stop moving was a desperate attempt to match the two halves, to give his body a reason to feel the stringent languor that plagued him worse than whitecough. Wolfcall was lonely. He had an entire clan full of cats that loved and respected him, but he was lonely. And he couldn't understand why.

Eventually, he stopped his attempt at evasion, continuing casually along the path and letting his breathing slow. The dark warrior walked for a long time, until finally he could hear the rushing of water up ahead, and he paused, head tilting. He had never spent a lot of time in this section of the territory, so Wolfcall paused near the bank of the river, sitting just a fox-length away from the iced-over edge. The middle still ran free, too quick-running to freeze over so early in the season. This was the only portion of SkyClan territory that shared a border with RiverClan, but it was so far off from the fishing-cats' camp that it was rarely an issue.

A long, weary sigh escaped Wolfcall almost involuntarily, and he curled his long tail around his paws, shivering briefly to generate some warmth since he'd stopped moving. A flicker of movement caught his eye, and Wolfcall glanced towards it, squinting against the gathering darkness just in time to see the shape of another cat disappear behind some brush, unaware of his presence. Figuring it was just a kittypet, he disregarded it as a danger, and settled down on the riverbank, tucking his paws under him, though he did keep one ear tilted in the direction the other cat had gone.